RPS Asks: Who’s Your Gaming Love?

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On this loviest of days, we want to know which gaming characters you truly love. Not fancy. Bleaurgh – we’re not CVG. Love. Whether it’s eros, philos, storgy or agape, whom do you find yourself caring about in the gaming world? Which characters do you worry about like you might your brother or sister? Is there a hero you’d make sacrifices for? Is there a game kid you find yourself wanting to parent? Or is there a fictional someone you’d swoop up into your arms, stare deeply and lovingly into his or her eyes, and carry into the sunset? Let us know your game loves below.

Cutscene Nathan Drake, hmm, sure. In-game Nathan Drake however is a mass-murdering jerk who thinks he can laugh off brutal headshots with an unfunny one-liner.

I could go with a few Persona/Final Fantasy or Bioware characters. But I’ll pick that sad, ill secretary girl who’s name I can’t remember from Actual Sunlight. She could use some love, care and friendliness.

Of all the Planescape: Torment characters, the only one to love is Ravel. If every kindness she does is laced with cruelty, than the love she feels for you is more genuine than a one note ghost, a milquetoast prig, or an abusive thief can muster. She is poetic, as ugly as you are, and tenacious in reuniting. With no qualms she performed terrible acts to seed messages for you to find as sign posts to her. Why she nearly tore Sigil apart alone is the most touching act ever done in the whole game, and shows perverse consideration that makes you want to hug her forever.

Torment took somewhat of a Bildungsroman place in my development, and Grace told me that I can be pre-made for something, but don’t need to carry the baggage that usually comes with it, if I can be strong enough to mend it to my own cause. A beautiful thing to be taught. Definitely down in the philia category, I think.

When you say ‘storgy’ do you mean ‘stalky’? As in a stalky kind of love? In that case can I have Nicolette du Clare? She’s got a big empty house with lots of grounds that would be ideal for loitering plaintively.

I’m just saying that one day it’s all “Solid copy sir!” and making plans about spending ability points and the next day all you’re left with is a name on a wall and sad bagpipe music.

I just don’t want you to make my mistakes. (Which mainly involved dashing into an area without scouting properly, but also forgetting that just because grenades don’t ever scatter doesn’t mean a rocket launcher won’t)

I really liked ol’ ‘Sheriff’ until it turned out she had psychic powers. Suddenly, I had to rethink whether or not it would be wise to be in a relationship with a woman that could seize complete control of my mind. But, to her, it didn’t really matter what I wanted.

Ditto for my female assault and sniper colonels, ‘Android’ and ‘Witchy’ respectively. The most kills, the most willpower and consequently the first to pass psy tests. They also fed my male gaze by looking stunning in the advanced armors.

Paperboy. I was always so sad when a dog got at him. Always felt like it was my fault.
I was not trying hard enough. Like he needed more than I could give. But I couldn’t
let go, I had to keep trying. In the end, there may have been a happy end for us,
did it not? I don’t allow myself to think I was wrong in hoping. Oh, my paperboy.
We could have been great together. I hope you’re well, wherever you are,
and always one pedal kick faster then the hounds of spritehell.

I could never fall for the Dragon Age cast, simply because of their deeply unsettling failure to react in the slightest way when they and everyone around them is covered with blood. Leliana introducihg herself and chatting about nunnery or whatever while some poor bastard’s gizzards are dripping off her chin, like it’s not even a thing… brrr.

If I’d be a woman my choice would be Garrett.
Instead I choose Jade from Beyond Good and Evil, I actually and truly fell in love with her a little bit the first time playing through the game a couple of years ago, she’s just wonderful!

Female villager from Age of Empires II. Easy on the eye (yes i’m a red blooded male RPS), capable of mining, lumberjacking, farming, hunting and construction, proficient in several languages and can besiege a castle at a pinch.

As befitting just finishing watching its animated adaptation, I love the cast of Persona 4 too much, such a good bunch of characters, and they really make you attached to them, in no small part to the school life/fighting demons contrast. You get to see them as people.

Goodness. Here we go.
Merrill. Mostly because she’s confused and out of place and at the same time troubled and innocently naive, which mirrors early parts of my adulthood where adolescence was still trying to keep its monkey-girl-y paws on the levers in my mind. Seeing that I have that astonishing and somewhat problematic tendency to fall into the “birds of a feather” kind of crush… Yeah. Psyche, ho!

Ah, glad to see another Dragon Age comment… I at first thought mine further down about Morrigan was the only one about DAO. Considering that the romance options in that game were actually pretty deep, that would have been a shame.

I think the fact that different people have different characters they ‘fell in love with’ while playing it is a good testament to how well the topic was handled. The relationships your avatar formed felt personalised in a way which no other game I’ve played has matched.

It just so happens that I got back into Deus Ex 3 last night, and was pleased when an opportunity to do something / get to know Malik came up.

Then it went back down again halfway through, because if you’re not a hacker in the third game, you miss out on several side quests where there’s no other way around. Incredibly irritating, not least as the Lee Hong thing even says that he’s going to the Hive later, and I just know that if I were able to hack his PC, he would magically appear there, and he won’t until I do that. There really should be an option to just skip the hacking and confront him at the Hive with the baseball bat.

And then if you went for computer wizard or ninja, you were screwed in the mandatory boss fights (though I did manage to get a turret with me to one fight).
DXHR didn’t give you quite enough alternatives, and it suffered for it. Still a good game though.

Trustworthy also was Michelle Walthers, methinks. Sure, she had lost a marble or two, but she doled out some interesting backstory and had that cool/nice grandmother vibe to her — someone I would want to take care of, so I’m glad the game gave me the option to do so. Unless she was actually an Illuminatus maneuvering me with that backstory. *fist shake*

And then there’s Josie Thorpe — she is someone I felt awful about (though this, like Malik’s deal, depends on how you play the game). Early in the game, I ignored some nagging about hostages and delighted in exploring the Sarif building. When I started the next mission, I got this sinking feeling when I learned the hostages had been shot as a result of my tarrying. Games aren’t supposed to do that! Then I felt a bit better when I rescued Josie from Zeke at the end of that mission, but then down again: Josie’s husband was one of the hostages, and now she’d be living with that horrible loss because I treated the game like a game. :(

Heather Poe for me. She’s so endearing in her misguided attempts at gaining your approval. She’s one of the extremely rare videogame characters that feels genuine. And then… well.

SPOILER ALERT DONT READ IF YOU HAVEN’T PLAYED THIS WONDERFUL GAME. GO PLAY IT BTW

Midway through the game I thought to myself: “If this was the real world… you know, a version of the real world where vampires can breach human security like it’s not even there, me being a person who has numerous vampire enemies and an apartment with zero security… with… something that’s dear to me. If that was so, we could all see where this would be going. But this is a game, designed to sell and to appeal to consumer fantasies. Stupid, indulgent, puerile consumer fantasies. Believability and logic are secondary. They’d NEVER in a million years alienate the player by………………………… I can’t believe that. This developer has balls of… I don’t even know what material would do this here justice. BRAVO!

Jack, from Mass Effect. I feel a bit bad about it because it wasn’t really an organic feeling as she was designed with the romance sub-storyline. Also, her writing was at times clichéd and problematic. Regardless, I did, and oddly still do care for her, which is part of why I haven’t played ME3. I’ve heard she has a much abbreviated role and also given what’s been said of the ending I’d likely end up breaking her heart after she finally learned to trust again.

If by abbreviated you mean “she’ll not be available as a squadmate”, that’s true. But I liked her role in ME3 a lot. I also loved the character development they did with her. I probably won’t spoil anything by saying that of course you run into basically everyone from the two first games, and most really aren’t much more than fan service. “Oh hi Jacob, let me help you fight off these bad guys and save these good guys”. “Oh hi Miranda, about that email you sent me… What do you need?”

I thought Jack was really the star of the show in that respect in ME3, because there was a bit more to it than that. Her role and her personality had actually evolved quite a bit. If you like Jack, I’d say that’s a good reason to play ME3, not to avoid it.

And the ending? Eh, just ignore it. The rest of the game is lovely. You can always just pretend it had a proper ending. :)

In my opinion Nathan Drake and the cast of Uncharted (2 in particular) are really the only computer game characters that have been well written and realised enough so that I care about them. Perhaps Jan Ors from Jedi Knight too?

Aside from that, Valkyria chronicles soldiers are pretty good for engendering an emotional attachment and X-Com to a slightly lesser degree. Shame VC is quite a short and narrow game once you take all the cut scenes out of it.

Edit: Oh crap! I forgot about Mass Effect where I most definitely cared about Kaidan (in 1, who bit the bullet in my game) and in 2, Kasumi and in 3 Thane & Mordin. I was emotionally tangled up in those friendships. I think Thane’s ME3 scene for me was the most gut wrenching. BUT i do not think that those characters were realised half as well as Uncharted

Ha, with you on the Saints. I don’t normally play women, but I rolled one for SR3 for some reason and she was awesome and looked dangerous as fuck. Never has a pink and purple colour scheme seemed so menacing.

And actually my guy from SR2 was pretty awesome. I did him as a fat over muscle lump of a man who wore chavy clothes and a sulky expression, with either a British accent or at least the most British accent they provided. He looked like a football hooligan as envisaged by Irvine Welsh.

Alyx Vance. Although, absence makes the heart go yonder, and it’s been nearly six years now. I know losing a loved one to a brain-sucking psychic slug is unpleasant, but you’ve got to rejoin the world sometime.

…geez, it really has been nearly six years since HL2: E2. I think it’s safe to write off the Half-Life series as finished now.

He’s been following Shizzkara Talonscratch (aka the Dragonborn) for what seems like years now, offering his repetitive lines of dialogue with such a sweet flicker of a smile that they never get boring, and fearlessly trapping souls with the Mace of Molag Bal to keep both their magic weapons recharged. In truth, he has become as much a hero as the Dragonborn herself.

She loves him dearly, and could not live without him, but in this cruel, cold Nordic land Khajiit are not allowed to get married. She’s engaged to someone else, but has been refusing to go through with the marriage for so long that she can’t even remember who her real fiance is.